Sleeping Dragons
by Aebbe
Summary: In an age of violence and conquest, four great witches and wizards came together with a common goal. But in a few short years, there were only three. What happened to divide them, and what became of the great Slytherin himself?
1. Prologue

**A/N: Even if you never bother with Author's Notes, please read this one - it's important!**

**This is the story of the founders of Hogwarts, but not in the semi-mythic form it appears in the books. Anyone who knows anything about Medieval history knows a lot of things about that story are historically impossible, from the formation of the names of the founders themselves (surnames were not common, and not usually inherited so Ravenclaw's daughter would have been unlikely to have the same second name as her mother) to the building of a castle such as Hogwarts in the north of Scotland at that date, to the very concept that schools, as we think of them, even existed in Britain then.**

**However, if you do know anything about Medieval history, you also know how unreliable a lot of it is. 'History' written down in the early Middle Ages include 'factual' accounts of miracles alongside dates of battles, and the biography of a king was quite likely to claim his descent from a Norse god or mythical Greek warrior. A lot of it was based on hearsay and folklore; people wrote down an old story as fact, then twenty years later someone else wrote it down again, only slightly differently, to match their own interpretation of the story. Down the years, names of places and people have been changed to suit the language and pronunciation of the person recording them - London itself has been known as Londinium (under the Romans), Lundenwic (in the Anglo Saxon language), and Lundenburgh (by the later Anglo Saxons), before becoming London. **

**I've used that unreliability to create a story that isn't very like the simplified, modernised version told in the books, but resembles something more like turn-of-the-millennium Europe - the story that the myths might have sprung from. I'm not an expert in Medieval history, and this wouldn't pass as well-researched historical fiction, quite apart from the fact that I'm writing about a magical world. I've also had to try and reconcile the blatantly unrealistic canon facts with something a little more likely, which has resulted in a few compromises. But I've studied Medieval history at university level, so I hope I know enough to have created at least a vaguely realistic world.**

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

**Courage**

He ran, dodging the hand that stretched to grab him, and fled away from the hall, his breathless laughter mingling with fear and the thrill of the chase, as he heard the outraged bellow of Aethbed the Monk. He flung himself into the trees, burrowing down among the scattered leaves, and muffling his laughter in his arm.

The man was a dull old fool, and deserved to have his dull old grey robe turned the colour of kingcups in the spring. Not that he had meant to do it – he had just been staring at the man, and hating him, and wondering if he ever wore any other colour than grey, when suddenly his robe was yellow.

There was the distant rumbling of voices. Aethbed was in high dudgeon, and was taking his leave on his fat pony. Good riddance. Probably he would not come back again this side of Candlemas. No matter that the holding depended on good relations with the Abbey. That was a price worth paying for not seeing the monk's face again.

His father would probably not agree.

But the painful experience to come when his father caught up with him could be put off a little longer.

Godric squirmed through the thicket on his belly, and emerged the other side. He knew hiding places where his father would never find him.

* * *

><p><strong>Learning<strong>

It was raining, she was saddlesore and sad and scared, and Rhonwen of Llanfairancawn did not feel much like a Princess. Her dark curls were plastered to the side of her face, and her eyes dark pools in a pale face. But she would not cry. She was a princess, and a Welsh princess at that. She would not let these Saxons see her weep.

A man rode up beside her and placed a hand on the bridle of her horse. His eyes were stern, but not unkind. He pointed, and spoke words that she did not understand. She bit her lip. She had thought that she spoke English quite well, but she did not understand him when he spoke to her. He seemed to speak a different sort of English from the one she was used to.

He saw that she had not understood, and pointed instead. She followed his finger through the gloom. There was a hill, and on the top of the hill was a barricade fence, with lights twinkling beyond it.

"Raven's Law," he said. She looked at the fence, and the lights, dark against the grey skies, and swallowed. This was to be her home now. A strange determination took hold of her. She would learn the Saxon tongue. She would learn their house and their ways, and through learning, she would master them.

She looked back at the man beside her and nodded stiffly.

Raven's Law was home, and the man who rode beside her was its master, and her husband.

* * *

><p><strong>Ambition<strong>

The wind was high and the sea was rough as the small vessel made its crossing. The boy in the hold curled into a miserable ball and hoped that if he were dying, he would hurry up and do it.

"Boy!" A dark head poked itself into the tiny space. "Ach, boy! It stinks in here! No wonder you're puking your guts up."

The boy made no reply, except for a faint whimper. The eyes in the dark face softened and a hand reached out and took the boy by the shoulder. The man muttered a strange incantation, and the boy relaxed a little, uncurled and stared up at the man.

"Why did you not do that before?"

The man looked almost amused. "I'm sorry, boy. I did not realise how bad you were."

The boy frowned. "Could you not still the storm as well?"

"No," the man replied, the amusement more evident than before. "I have no power over the elements."

The boy looked slightly queasy again as the boat rocked, but he struggled into a sitting position.

"Can I learn to do that?"

There was silence for a moment.

"Yes," the man said eventually. "Some day, young Salazar, you can learn to do that."

* * *

><p><strong>Love<strong>

She watched the beehives burn, and felt her heart break.

They had done nothing to deserve this. They had lived in this land for generations. Once, their people had ruled it, but her family were not rulers, not even jarls, just farmers. But since the Danelaw had fallen and the Saxons moved back in, bearing a Danish name was not a safe thing.

"Why...?" her mother whispered, her face white and drawn. She was large with child, and this pregnancy had been hard.

The twins clutched her skirts, weeping with fear. The three older children huddled together. They all knew the answer to their mother's whispered question, but it did not help. Nobody spoke again until the flames were dying down.

"We have nothing left." Her father's voice was defeated. "We are ruined."

She turned and stared at him, her chin lifting.

"We are not ruined, Da." She spoke in the old Norse tongue that was his native language, although she did not speak it very well. "Not while we still have each other."

"Aye," he said, trying to smile. "We still have each other. That's something, isn't it Helga-girl? That's something."


	2. The Whore's Brat

**Chapter 1 – The Whore's Brat**

There are moments in everyone's life which we look back on, years later, and recognise as key turning points; moments in which, although we may not have realised it at the time, everything changed. The first of those moments in my own life came on a hot, cloudless day, just outside the city of Burgos, in the County of Castile, northern Spain. The day I met the man who was to change my life in ways I could not imagine. It seems strange now, knowing, as I do, what came after, to look back and see him again as I saw him on that day, through a child's eyes, as a stranger.

He taught me most of what I know. He was a Moor, and as such, he was distrusted by many whom I met in Britain, but I would have handed my immortal soul to him without a second thought. And yet I turned against him. I turned against every person I loved in the end, because that is who I am. I am the snake who sits docile in the sun, basking on the rock. Who turns, sudden as lightening, and bites the foot of whoever steps near.

He taught me to speak in English, and he taught me to read and write, although these words are penned by a scribe, partly because my hands are crabbed and twisted with age now, and partly because I do not write English very well. My voice is that of an Englishman and a Saxon, except when I am speaking Norman French, but my writing is still poor; he taught me in Arabic, so that is what I write in myself. It is all that betrays my origins; I have all but forgotten the Basque and Spanish tongues that shaped my childhood.

But before I die, I wish to set it down in writing. I know that there will be stories; tales that last down the years, of the four founders of the great school at Hoc Bharth. They will be myths, twisted away from reality, because that is how stories work. And so I intend to set down the truth; the truth of my own story. This is the story of Salazar Slytherin, once called Fernando Salazar, and born in a hovel to a Castilian whore, an illegitimate child of the great house of Salazar.

Few know of my inauspicious beginnings. Most would be surprised, I think. The proud Slytherin, coming from such a background? But now, as an old man, I wonder whether my pride isn't partly _because_ of who I was born. I have little to be proud of, except my own achievements and the purity of my blood. For although I am a bastard, my blood is pure. My mother was a witch, and the house of Salazar is a house of wizards. That is why she was chosen, because no Salazar would befoul himself by coupling with a Muggle.

I never knew my father; indeed, of all the proud sons of the house of Salazar, I never knew which he was. My mother was silent on the subject; I wonder now whether she knew herself. Whoever he was, he did not know of my existence. She gave me his name though, so perhaps she felt some rightful pride in having born a child to a man of such a family. Fernando Salazar I was, and I kept the Salazar, although I dropped the meaningless Fernando.

My mother was not a whore by choice (who is?) but through desperate necessity. I know nothing of her family except that she had none, and no money either. These days, I am neither proud nor ashamed of her. Indeed, she is such a distant, unreal memory that I find myself unable to summon any emotions about her at all. I am an old man now, so she must have been dead many years, but when and how I do not know. Probably in the same Castile hovel, of one of the vile poxes that always afflict those of her profession.

My memories of those early times are vague, and I do not choose to recall them often. Our house, if it could be called a house, was tiny, made up of a single room with a curtain across it. One half of it was where my mother slept, and also where she conducted her 'business'; it was so small that there was no space at all not covered in bed clothes. The other half was our living space, and also where I slept, curled on a pallet on the floor, with a threadbare covering during the winter months. In the summer, everything was hot and sticky, and nobody wanted coverings. With only a curtain between myself and whatever went on in the other half of the room, my innocence did not last long. I learnt to shut my ears, but I could not erase the knowledge.

Looking back to those days, in the dirty, dusty streets of Burgos, where the sun beat down so mercilessly in the summer, while we shivered in the snow during the winter, and I spent my time knocking around with other children of the slums and picking the purses of the wealthy, it seems as though it must have happened to a different person, in a different lifetime and a different world. That was not Salazar Slytherin, that dirty, dark-skinned child with the wary, shifting eyes, dressed in rags, peeling a stolen fig in the gutter. He bears no resemblence to me, that child, and the world I came to know – the world of Hogwarts, the grey stone fortress amid cold northern mountains, the grand halls lit by flickering firelight, the pride and prestige I knew as a man of substance and learning, the joys of wealth and wine and women – is entirely alien to him, just as his world is to me.

I was later taught by the greatest master in the world, and learnt things that you young wizards of today can only dream of, but my greatest skill; the thing that set me apart from even those of the purest blood, was not learnt. It was something that I could do from birth, a skill inherited, I am sure, from my great Salazar ancestors, and I knew of it from an early age; I could speak to snakes.

There are more serpents in Spain than there are in England or Scotland, but I was never afraid of being bitten. I understood snakes and they understood me. They are the most beautiful of creatures; long and lithe and as soft as silk, with their blunt heads and gentle flickering tongues. I had been taught to hide my skill, as I was taught to hide all of my magic. I chafed against this arrangement even then; it did not seem right to me that magic should be hidden as though it were something to be ashamed of, but at that young age I did as I had been taught from birth, and as I crouched that day, in the shadow of the city walls, crooning gently to a viper in the dust, I thought that nobody was watching me. I was shocked, therefore, when a voice spoke to me, in Spanish, although the accent sounded foreign to me.

"Do you speak to the serpent, boy?" The voice was amused and light, but there was an undercurrent of something else in it, something that I could not place but which was a little like amazement.

I sprang up, my reflexes fast and my body agile, my hand going automatically to the pocket where I kept both my wand, and a small but serviceable knife. However, the man in front of me, tall and dark-skinned, was holding a hand out with a disarming smile.

"Easy, boy!" he told me gently, "No need to shy like a frightened horse. You are not a horse, and I am nothing very frightening."

I relaxed slightly, my lips twitching upwards just the tiniest amount at his words, although my hand still hovered near my pocket, for I did not trust easily. He looked me over, a calculating but not unfriendly expression in his eyes.

"You are a wizard," he said, and although it was not a question, I hesitated, and then nodded. If he knew to ask, he must be one too, or so I thought, and I was tired of secrecy; of pretending to be the same as everyone else. I wanted to be proud of who and what I was...

A small smile passed over his face, and I noted that his eyes were proud, but kind.

"And when you speak to snakes... do they reply?" he pressed gently.

I looked warily at him, still not trusting him. Did he believe me, or was he patronising me? Even as a child, there was nothing I hated more. And whether he believed me or not, was he a friend, or was it a trick?

"Yes," I answered at last, the first time I had spoken to him, my voice defiant and also a little proud, "They speak their own language, and I speak it too. I understand them."

The man was silent for a moment, watching me. I could not understand the expression on his face.

"An unusual talent you have there, boy," he said at last, "What is your name?"

"Salazar," I replied promptly, something making me give the name of my fathers first, not my own given name, "Fernando, of the house of Salazar."

His eyebrows shot up, an amused look crossing his face, which I understand now, for the idea of that dirty street urchin being a son of the house of Salazar must have seemed ridiculous. At the time, it annoyed me.

"Do you not believe me?" I demanded, as proud and haughty as a gutter rat could be.

He looked at me with a slight smile.

"As for that, I do not know who or what you are. Perhaps you _are_ a spawn of Salazar; there is a look of them around your eyes, now that I see you properly. But whatever your parentage, I do not think that you have ever set foot inside the halls of the lords Salazar, or that you ever will..."

I could not deny this truth, and so I was silent, resentful of his casual dismissal of my proud lineage. I know now that he was not as dismissive as he pretended; he was simply reserving judgement, as was his way, until I had proved myself. Blood always shows, and he knew that if I had really come from a pureblood house, it would become clear.

"What else can you do?" he demanded of me. I hesitated. I was but nine years of age, or thereabouts, and had had no teacher but my mother, and the old hag down the street who had tried to teach me to see the future in her fire. I had a wand (there were no laws in Castile in those days, about the age one had to be to own a wand), but it was an old one of my mother's, and I had been able to perform no great magic with it. Instead of demonstrating therefore, I faced him with my hands on my hips, a defiant pose.

"Why do you want to know?" I answered his question with one of my own.

"You are a suspicious soul, young Salazar," he answered, amusement in his voice, "I am curious, that's all, because your ability to talk to snakes shows a strange talent. I have only met one before who shared it. You will meet people who are suspicious of such a skill, but they are those who do not understand the nature of things. I would like to know more of you, small offshoot of the House of Salazar. Walk with me?"

I walked with him, as we re-entered the city, for he had made me curious, although I did not let my guard down. I had not learnt then the art of seeming to be at ease when in fact you are wary and watchful, and so I must have seemed a sullen, silent child, for I refused to be drawn by his questions. However, he did not seem disturbed by this, and talked calmly instead, and so rather than give away any of my own secrets, I learnt about him. A cunning man, he was, who knew how to win the trust of a child like me, for as I learnt his own history, I began to feel that I knew him. He trusted me enough to tell me about himself, and therefore what harm did it do if I let slip the odd thing here and there, about my mother, and my home, and the boys I knew, and the magic I could perform.

His name was Abu al-Sadiq, and he was a Moor, although I had deduced that from the moment I saw him, with his dark complexion and Moorish clothes. There were many Moors in Burgos, for their lands were only a little way to the south. However, he had come from much further south, from Grenada, although his father had been born across the southern seas. His family were also pureblooded wizards, and were, I realised from certain things he said, deeply respected and revered in the southern lands. Abu himself was a Master Potioneer, brewing potions for the most prestigious of houses. Even the Muggles knew his name and bought his potions, for all their ignorance of all things magical. He made me realise, in that one conversation, just what it could mean to be a wizard; what greatness it promised, and what status it bestowed.

He was, he told me, on his way north. He was going to Britain, a place I had heard of only vaguely, and knew to be cold, remote and uncivilised (I was ignorant, of course, but I was not far wrong). At the end of our conversation, we stood at the corner of the ramshackle street I lived on, and I felt somehow bleak at leaving him; as if I had been given a glimpse into another world, peering under a half-lifted curtain, which must now fall back, leaving me to my life of petty crime, and listening to my mother entertaining clients at night, and telling fortunes in the fire.

And that was when he gave me the greatest shock I had ever had.

"I am looking to take an apprentice," he said abruptly, "I believe that you would suit me, young Salazar. What do you say?"

Those were the words that ended one life and began another. The words that pulled back the curtain on a world I had hardly known existed. I knew that I had been offered something important; something life-changing, and that I must think carefully about accepting or refusing it, but I could not know what changes my decision would bring, for despite my neighbour's best efforts, I had never mastered the art of seeing the future. For it was on that day that Fernando the whore's brat began to fade away and, although I would not use the name for many years to come, that day that Salazar Slytherin was born.


	3. The Thegn's Son

**Chapter 2 – The Thegn's Son **

I arrived in Britain towards the end of winter. I had passed the previous six months with Abu. We had travelled north through Castile, passing through the mountains before the cold weather arrived, and so to a house Abu owned in the region of Aquitaine, in West Frankia. There we spent the winter, and he taught me much. In the beginning, I longed for my home and my mother and everything familiar. But that passed, and in time I became accustomed to the new comfort of my life.

The house was not a large one, but it seemed a vast fortress to me. I slept on a mattress made of goose-down, in a corner of the hall that I had to myself, though there were servants and slaves sleeping in the same room. Abu had his own chamber, for he was a man who liked his privacy. He kept me working hard through most of each day, but he was a good master. He rarely lifted his hand to me, and every day I had some hours to myself. There were other boys who worked in the house, all wizards like myself, and I enjoyed their company, though I always found something lacking, and as I learnt from Abu I came to know what it was. Wizards they might be, but their blood was not pure. They were slow and dull-witted boys, and it was clear to me why Abu would not have chosen any like them for his apprentice. They could perform only the most basic of spells, and there seemed little hope of them ever learning more.

I, on the other hand, learnt fast. The first thing he taught me was how to read and write in Arabic, for it was vital that I should be able to follow his written instructions and read things out to him. Then he began to tutor me in the noble art of potion-making, and much else besides. Abu was one of the great wizards of the world, and under him I flourished. For the first time, I had a wand that worked as it should, for he had one made especially for me. He also began to teach me to speak in other languages, a skill I picked up easily, perhaps because I had always spoken several. As well as the snake-tongue and my native Castilian, I also spoke Basque, and a small amount of Arabic; now I added English, Occitan and Latin to that.

I was loath to leave Aquitaine as the spring approached, but Abu wished to go to Britain, to converse with some other great wizards he knew of there, and to acquire some potions ingredients he could not get elsewhere, and so we set off north once more.

The north seemed to me a wasteland. The spring came later there, and so although we left the beginnings of warmth and birdsong behind us, we found cold winds and lingering snow and bare trees. I was sick to my stomach as we crossed the narrow strip of water between Flanders and England, my first time on a boat and not a happy experience. By the time we made land, I was as weak as a kitten, and more or less crawled ashore. We rested in an inn on a wild part of the coast, and then we travelled on. I was quite determined to hate the place, and sulked for for the first part of the journey. Abu continued to teach me this and that, but we could not conduct proper lessons on the road, though he insisted I continue to practice my English.

As a child in Burgos, I had been thin and underfed and ill-grown. The months in Aquitaine had seen me grow in all directions. For the first time in my life I had been well fed, and so my flesh now covered my bones, and my skin and hair grew brighter, and my legs longer. Weeks on the road worked the flesh off again, though we still ate well enough, and instead I grew strong. My muscles no longer ached at the end of each day's riding, and my skin no longer blistered under the reigns. By the time we arrived at our destination, I had the appearance of a tough young wayfarer, journey-stained and road-hardened.

And so we came at last to the great homestead where dwelt Abu's friend. It was deep in the heartland of the old kingdom of Wessex, a few leagues from the walls of the city of Badum, set amid rolling, forest-covered hills. It was a vast hall, surrounded by a smaller buildings, farm fields, and a high wattle fence. A year before I might have been impressed, but I had seen much on my travels, and fancied myself a man of the world. We travelled with no servants or guard, for Abu needed none, and must have looked like vagabonds as we rode up to the outer fence. However, as soon as Abu spoke his name, the gates were opened for us, and a tall, broad-shouldered old man was striding towards us across the yard.

"Abu Al-Sadiq! It has been too many years, my old friend!" the man exclaimed, in English spoken with an accent I could barely understand.

"Beorhtric, I come to you at last," my master answered. They embraced, and broke away, smiling.

"And who is the lad?" the man called Beorhtric asked. "Your son?"

"Nay, my apprentice. He goes by the name of Salazar." Abu never called me anything but Salazar; what had begun as a joke had become an easy habit.

"Salazar?" The man looked quizzically at me from behind great white eyebrows. "Kin of the Salazars of Castile?"

"Some sort of kin, aye," Abu agreed. "But of a minor branch. The boy is a promising wizard. And Salazar, this is my old friend, Beorhtric Hwit, whom I met in Frankia many years ago, when we were both young."

"You were younger than I, Abu." He turned to me. "You speak English then, lad? Very good. You must meet the boy I have staying here myself. You will be much of an age with him. Now, come. Hildegard will be glad to see you, Abu."

We followed him towards the hall, where we were introduced to his wife, Hildegard, herself a great witch, or so Abu had told me. These people and their ways were foreign to me, but they were kind. We were given hot water to wash the dirt of the road away, and then invited to sit before the fire, and given ale and oatcakes, for the meal would not be for some time. Beorhtric and Hildegard sat with us, and they and Abu spoke of times past, of battles fought in Frankia, and of King Aethelred's ongoing feuds with the Scots of Strathclyde and the dukes of Normandy. Then they fell to speaking about spells and potions and great wizarding duels. I did not understand everything, but I listened closely, letting their words fall over me like a song.

"And who is the lad you spoke of, Beorhtric?" Abu asked at last. "Some kin of yours?"

"By blood, no," Beorhtric answered. "Do you mind a lad called Gryffydd, who was with us in Frankia? Hardly more than an apprentice himself at the time, but good with a sword as well as a wand?"

"The Welsh boy? Aye, I recall him. But he'd be a man grown by this time."

"A man grown, true enough," Beorhtric agreed. "And advanced far. He is one of the king's most honoured thegns, and spends half the year at Aethelred's side. Aethelred likes to have a wizard or two in his services, and he rewards generously. This hall you sit in is his thanks to me, for my years of service."

I knew that it was not my place to ask questions, but I was puzzled by these words. It seemed that wizards in England had no need to hide what they were, which was right to my mind. But I did not understand why a wizard as great as Beorhtric must be would serve a Muggle, and speak so cheerfully of it, as if it did not demean him.

"The lad I have taken on is Gryff's boy," Beorhtric went on, knowing nothing of my thoughts. "It is our custom here, you know, for young witches and wizards to go away from home, to learn their arts from others. Gryff knows that I am a warrior as well as a wizard, and he asked me to take his eldest son, some ten years ago now. I have taken all his children willingly, for they show much promise. The boy who is here at the moment ought to be Gryff's third son, but the eldest, Leofric, was killed in Strathclyde last year – a bad business when sons are taken before their fathers." Beorhtric shook his head, looking downcast for a moment, but then smiled again. "He's out hawking just now – spends most of his life outside – but he'll be back before long and you can meet him. He's a very talented young wizard, and a good boy, if a little wild."

I wasn't very sure how I felt about this. Most of the boys I had played with in my life had been very clearly my inferiors. Now here was one who was not only a wizard, but might be as good a wizard as myself. And while I had been born in a hovel, he had evidently been born in a great hall like this one, and had a father who was somebody important, even if he did serve a Muggle king. I made up my mind not to tell this boy of where I had come from.

He came in just before the meal, as Hildegard directed her serving girls with plates of meat – more meat than I had ever seen together. Abu and Beorhtric were still deep in talk, and I sat beside them on a small stool, beginning to feel a little bored. I spotted the boy before they did and knew immediately who he must be as he came in the main doors from outside. He might have been my age, or a year or two older, but he was taller than me, and already broad-shouldered, with a mane of tawny hair and a wind-swept appearance.

A moment later, Beorhtric had seen him and called him to us. With one hand on the boy's shoulder, he explained our presence and introduced us.

"And this young scapegrace," he finished, "is my ward, Godric."

The boy smiled widely at me.

"Pleased to meet you," he said courteously, then immediately went on. "Do you like to hunt? I have my own hawk; you shall meet her if you want!"

"I've never hunted with hawks," I answered quietly. I had never hunted at all, unless I counted hitting the odd rabbit with a slingshot outside Burgos, but I would not tell this thegn's son that.

"Oh! Well, I shall show you!" he announced, and made as if to take me out at once, but Hildegard bustled up to us.

"After the meal, if you please, Godric," she said. "And have a care to your manners! Salazar has had a long journey to get here – he will be too tired for your hawks."

"Very well, Mistress," Godric agreed meekly, but winked at me as soon as she was gone. "After we sup," he whispered, as we were ushered towards the table. Swept along with him, I could do nothing but nod my agreement. And thus was my first meeting with the boy who would become known as Godric Gryffindor, the lion of the west.


	4. Saxons and Danes

**Chapter 3 - Saxons and Danes**

* * *

><p>'A little wild,' Beorhtric had called Godric.<p>

He certainly had scant regard for either study or rules, and he loved to be out-of-doors, running with the hounds or flying his hawk. His home, he told me, was far in the west, where moor and forest stretched for miles and few settlements were to be found, which perhaps explained his dislike of being fenced in. He hated to be still, and his constant activity and chatter was a little tiring to me, accustomed as I was to only Abu's company. Despite this, Godric and I got on surprisingly well. I found that, beneath the surface, he was not really so very wild. In fact, he sometimes made me laugh, with his strict code of honour, and his expectation that everyone else would abide by his rules too. In his home, I suppose they did. But I do not think he would have lasted long on the streets of Burgos.

During our stay there, however, he did teach me certain things. He taught me the ways of the English countryside, how to fly a hawk and track a hare, and he even began to teach me the rudiments of swordplay. I had never held a sword before and I was clumsy with it, but I took to hunting easily enough. Keen to impress, I taught Godric some of my own fighting techniques, which involved less playing by the rules and more hidden weapons. The first time I got the best of him by pulling my knife in a fight, he protested that it was not fair because he had not known that I was carrying a knife. I pointed out that if it had been a real fight he would be dead, fair or not, and so I had still won. He was unconvinced, but still keen to learn my methods.

I, for my part, enjoyed having a playmate who was my equal. Abu was busy with Beorhtric, and with other wizards who came and went, and although he frequently called on me to watch or assist him, I had more free time than I had had before, and passed a pleasant few months in that wooden Saxon hall. Our parting, when it came, was a reluctant one. We swore to each other that we were brothers, and as such would meet again. I had never had a brother, and found that I liked the idea. Godric had once had two, but one was dead and he did not think much of the other.

"You make a better brother than Eamon," he told me. "Someday you will come and visit my father's house, and see the Dartmoor, and meet my sisters."

My heart full, I promised that one day I would.

Beorhtric and Godric stood outside the enclosure as Abu and I rode away, just the two of us upon the road once more. I kept looking back over my shoulder until we rode over a rise and they were hidden from view.

It would be some years before I saw Godric again.

I missed him, and travelling with Abu seemed duller than it had before. I think he knew it, for he was kind to me, and kept me busy. Summer was underway, and the woods and fields were full of useful potion ingredients. Abu taught me to recognise them – how he knew the English plants and animals so well I do not know, but Abu's head held many, many secrets, more than he ever told me – and how to find them, then how to prepare and use them.

We travelled east once more, along green roads where we occasionally met other travellers. Some were friendly, others less so, but Abu was a match for any would-be bandits. Every night, before we slept, he cast protective spells around us, our horses and baggage, and once, when we were set upon in broad daylight, he drew his wand, and with a flash of green light the thieves lay dead upon the ground. It was not the first time I had seen death, but I was shocked nonetheless.

"They would have cut our throats without a second thought, young Salazar," he told me, seeing my face.

"I know," I said at once. I would not let him think me frightened, nor yet soft-hearted. "But I wish you had let me fight one of them."

He laughed.

"With your wand, or with that little blade of yours? I'll wager you'd have come off badly, whichever you used. Wait a while, boy – you'll get your chance when you're a little older."

We passed many strange sights on that road. In one place, we saw a great white carving of a horse, etched into the hillside. In another, there was a ring of great stones, with more in the middle, arranged in some strange pattern. Abu stopped, and told me that the stones had been set there by wizards, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago.

"Why?" I asked curiously. "What are they for?"

"Nobody knows," he replied. "These are not civilised lands like those to the south and east. They are wild, and no record has been kept for the most part."

After some days, we turned a little north, and went on until we came into lands riddled with lakes and waterways. Most of the land itself was marsh, and the roads were few, and treacherous to those who did not know them. Abu, though, had been to this place before, for here was another friend of his.

* * *

><p>Torhild of the Fen lived in one of the most far flung parts of the region, upon a piece of land that was almost an island, for it had only one ridge of solid ground leading to it. She was a woman of great age, and it was said that she had been born in a land of snow and ice in the far north of Sweden. The story had it that she had come to this land with the muggle king Ivar, who is called the Boneless, in the wake of his great scourge of England. That had happened more than a hundred years before I came to the fen country, but whether true or not, she had certainly been there a very long time.<p>

Torhild served no muggle king, however. She had never married, though she had once born a daughter (by Ivar himself, it was rumoured, though I doubt the truth of that), and for most of her life she had lived entirely alone, with only her servants, who were a mixture of humans and the creatures they call House Elves. I do not know how Abu came to know her; when I asked him, he merely smiled enigmatically and said that he had travelled widely and met many people during his life.

This eastern part of the country had, after Ivar's rampages, been part of the Danelaw, that part of Britain ruled by the Danes. When Abu and I came to it, with the year nearing midsummer, it had been back in the hands of the Saxons for many years, but there were still a large number of Danes among the population, as there still are today, though now they speak English and are nearly indistinguishable from the Saxons.

I thought it a bleak, lifeless place when we arrived, which only shows my ignorance, for the fen country is bursting with life. However, it can certainly be a strange and eerie place, especially to a stranger, and the day we arrived was overcast and still, with a heavy threat of rain hanging in the air. The house of Torhild was wooden, as all houses were then, even the houses of the great and wealthy, but in no other way did it resemble Beorhtric's cheery hall. It was far smaller, and it stood almost alone on its island, save for a few small shacks for animals. The roof was made of rushes, the wood was dark and water-stained, and it appeared to have sprung up out of the marshes, and to be made of the same stuff as them. A smell of peat smoke hung on the air.

However, gloomy though it appeared, I was glad to arrive, for I was heartily sick of the road. A manservant came out of the house to meet us, and he and Abu spoke, but I could understand nothing of what they said, for it was in a language I later learned was Old Norse. Even then, and even in the old Danelaw, Old Norse was rarely heard spoken, but Torhild liked tradition.

The man took our horses, ad gestured towards the house.

"Come," Abu said to me, and led the way to the door.

It was dark inside, the great fire in the centre burning with the low glow of peat, and there were only two torches, one on each end wall. After the daylight, I could see nothing clearly, and stood in the doorway blinking. Abu, however, murmured the Arabic spell for light, which sprang up at the end of his wand, and he marched forwards. At the far end of the room, seated on a high carved wooden chair, was Torhild herself, wrapped in a woollen cloak, her long white hair falling over her shoulders. Two men, whom I took to be her servants, stood either side of her, and on a stool at her feet sat a girl who looked to be no older than myself. Up close, in the light from Abu's wand and from the torch behind the group, I could see them well enough. One of the men was fair-skinned, like most of the Saxons I had met so far, fair-haired and with the stooped shoulders of a scholar, and the other was tall, broad-backed and dark, much darker than either I or Abu. The girl's face, being closer to the ground, was still in shadow, but from what I could see, she appeared to resemble the second man, and her hair was made of tight curls.

"You are expected, Master Potioneer," the old woman said, in English. After all the time I had spent with Godric, my understanding of English was much improved, and I had no difficulty knowing what she said, but I could tell that her accent was even thicker and stranger than the accents of the west.

"Am I indeed?" Abu gave a small chuckle. "Do you have spies on the road, or is there a scryer in your midst?"

"Perhaps both," Torhild replied. Her eyes fixed upon me, and I felt as though she were seeing further into me than she should, as if she could see all the things I had tried for months to hide, by imitating Godric's ways of talking and walking, by trying to take on the voice and manner of a Saxon thegn's son. I shifted from foot to foot, sure that the old woman with the high cheekbones and weather-worn skin knew immediately of the hovel and of Burgos, and my mother and the barefoot, hungry days.

"So this is the boy," was all she said.

"Aye, he is Salazar of Burgos," Abu replied.

I looked away from her piercing gaze and stared at the floor, unhappy with the introduction. I did not want to be Salazar of Burgos. Burgos was behind me.

She asked no more questions about me, and indeed did not appear to be much interested in me. Neither did she introduce the other people in the room. Instead, she summoned a slave girl and had us shown to a chamber that opened off a long hallway to the right of the great hall. This intrigued me, for I had never been in a house with so many separate chambers. Even Abu's house in Aquitaine had only had the one private room for Abu himself. I had never known of guests being given their own sleeping quarters.

"Torhild has her own ways," Abu told me, when I commented on this. "She is a very great witch, and has lived an unusual life. Treat her with great respect, Salazar, for she could probably kill you without moving or saying a word."

"Did you come here to talk to her about potions?" I said, for I was at a loss to see why we had come to this bleak place to visit this woman.

Abu looked at me for a long moment, as if weighing something in his mind.

"I think I may trust you enough to tell you that I came because she summoned me," he said at last. "I do not yet know why, so be on your guard. Torhild of the Fen makes a good friend, but I think she would make a bad enemy, and she is both secretive and manipulative. Do not say more than you have to, and keep your ears open. She speaks Arabic, but not Castilian."

He said no more, but from this I understood that he did not trust Torhild, though he had great respect for her.

At supper, I found myself placed beside the girl who had been with Torhild earlier, which surprised me for I had taken her for a servant, but she sat at Torhild's own table, and so did the two men who had been there. There were also several younger children at the table, who made a great deal of noise.

"Your name is Salazar?" the girl asked me in English, eyeing me with interest as I took my seat.

"Yes." I did my best to keep any hint of Burgos out of my accent.

"Are you a Moor, like the potioneer?" she went on.

I did not like her speaking about Abu like that, as if he was just any potioneer, but I shook my head.

"No." Abu had told me not to say more than I had to, but I was desperately curious to know who this girl was and why she sat at Torhild's table, when Abu had said that Torhild lived alone. Furthermore, although I had seen several people of her skin colour in England, it was not so common as further south, and I wondered if she too had come over the sea. "Have you always lived here?" I asked her.

A shadow passed over her face for a moment, but then she laughed.

"No, we arrived here just three weeks ago. Torhild is my grandmother's grandmother. My father is a farmer, and we lived much further north, where there are hills and valleys, not all this flat water."

So she was a Dane, or at least descended from them. And of a line of skilled witches, going by what Abu had said of Torhild. I looked at her with more interest.

"How long will you stay here for?" I asked.

She made a gesture with her hands that implied she did not know.

"Torhild has been good to us. We are kin, so we may stay as long as we need. My mother is abed with a new baby, and..." She hesitated. "We no longer have a farm."

"Oh." I did not quite know what to say to this. I wanted to ask what had happened to the farm, but did not think we knew each other well enough to ask questions like that.

"What is your name?" I asked instead.

Her face, which had been sad for a moment, cleared again and she smiled at me.

"Helga. My name is Helga."

* * *

><p>The following morning, Abu took me with him to consult with Torhild, in yet another small chamber. From the outside, the house did not look large enough to contain so many rooms, but I realised that powerful enchantments must lie upon it. Torhild had not been in the great hall when we broke our fast, but the man whom I now knew as Helga's father, husband to Torhild's great-granddaughter, told Abu that she wished to see him, and led us to the room.<p>

The room was unlike any I had seen before. It was a small chamber, mostly taken up by a large table in the centre. Around the walls were shelves, containing more books than I had ever seen in my life before. There were also shelves of what looked like potions ingredients in wood and horn containers, and other, more disturbing, things. The heads of three hares, preserved but for their eyes, which were merely empty sockets, stared down from a shelf. What looked like a human foot floated in a big jar made entirely of glass, and on the wooden walls, between the shelves, were chalked many symbols and diagrams I did not understand.

In the middle of it all stood Torhild of the Fen. She was a small woman, not a great deal taller than I was, but she stood very straight, and the only signs of her age were the thousands of lines, both deep and shallow, that laced across her skin, and the pure whiteness of her hair, which was long and straight and hung loose past her waist.

"Welcome, Master Sadiq," she said as we entered. Her eyes flickered over me, but with little interest. "I am sorry," she went on, "to have summoned you so far from your warm southern lands. I expect you are wondering what it is all about."

Abu made a small inclination of the head that could have meant yes or no. "Well, it was not much of an inconvenience to me," he said. "I had already planned to travel to Britain this year."

I remained silent, listening intently and hoping to learn something. My own interest lay not so much in the reason for Torhild's summons (for it seemed only natural that Abu should be in great demand) but in Abu's reason for responding to it. He was a great and respected wizard; why should he obey the word of this old crone?

"Tell me," the old woman went on, almost as if Abu had not spoken. "Have you ever seen the like of this?"

She produced from a drawer in the table a roll of thick, ancient vellum and passed it to Abu. He took it, unrolled it, and scanned down it, a frown appearing on his face.

"Where did this come from?" he asked at last.

"It was found not far from here," she replied. "In the house of a wizard even older than I. He is dead now, and some of the local petty witches and wizards – common folk, with little skill and no training – would have taken the contents of his house for their own. When I realised what the contents had among them, I collected them myself. Such things should not be handled by the ignorant. But tell me what you think of it." She fixed Abu with a piercing look from her blue eyes, an almost eager expression on her face.

"What is there to think? It is very old – and alone, does not seem of much significance. An account of a legend, nothing more. Unless you have something else to show me."

I thought I saw a smile cross Torhild's face, but it was so fleeting I might have imagined it.

"Potioneers. Always such cautious people," she said. "There is more. Here." This time she handed him a much newer-looking parchment. "This is a translation," she went on. "The original has been in my possession for a very long time, but it is in Norse, and I do not think you understand that."

Abu did not reply, but read in silence. When he had finished, he looked up at her.

"Why are you showing me this? What does it have to do with me?"

Torhild took a step forwards so that she was standing very close to Abu, directly in front of him. She barely came to his chest, but there was something about her that spoke of a powerful magic, and I would not have wanted her so close to me. Abu did not flinch or move backwards.

"What if I told you that I had discovered the secret those texts speak of, and that it was right here in the fens?"

There was a short silence in the room. I had not the smallest idea what was going on, but I was desperately curious. Thus, I was very annoyed when Abu turned to me and said, "Salazar, I think this is not for your ears. Take yourself outside."

If it had been Abu alone I might have tried to cajole him, but Torhild made me nervous. Hoping to convey to Abu that I was not happy, I said nothing, merely glared at him, then turned and marched out of the room.

Outside, the sun was shining, a stark contrast with both the darkness of the interior and the misty gloom we had arrived in the previous day. I stood a little way from the house and examined my surroundings. Torhild's home stood on a very slight rise in the ground, but the land all around us was almost entirely flat. It was not as empty and uninhabited as I had imagined, however. On the other side of a winding river, I could see a cluster of cottages, and even a small group of people busy by the water's edge, cutting reeds. Further away, across the marshes, was another set of houses, blue smoke rising from their roofs into the still air.

"Salazar!" A voice called my name, and I turned to see Helga and the two brothers next to her in age, playing by the side of a stream that ran down to the river. She waved when I turned around, and beckoned me to come over to them.

I hesitated, then strolled over. She smiled at me, her brothers busy piling rocks in the stream.

"Good morning!" she greeted me cheerfully.

"Good morning," I returned, although the morning did not seem very good to me, despite the sun.

"What did Torhild want?" she asked.

I shrugged, not wanting to admit my ignorance. "To ask Abu about some old texts. About potions," I added, though this was a guess. Why else, though, would Torhild have wanted to talk to Abu specifically, so much that she would ask him to come all the way from Spain? Nobody knew more of potions than Abu al-Sadiq.

"Oh." Helga looked disappointed that it was not something more exciting. "Well, anyway. These are my brothers, Eirik and Oskar."

The slightly larger of the two boys, who must have been around six years of age, glanced up at the sound of his name.

"Come and help us, Helga!" he said, then gave me a brief smile. "You as well, if you want."

He immediately went back to what he was doing, but Helga looked at me, a question in her expression.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

"Building a dam. Come, we'll show you how to do it."

To my surprise, she took my hand and tugged me towards the water. I cast a last look up at the house, where Abu was presumably hearing secrets, then gave myself up to the task of learning how to stack rocks in a stream.

Being not yet eleven years old, I found entertainment in the childish game, and almost forget my bad temper in the face of Helga and her brothers' merriness. The boys, once they had accepted me as a playmate, asked even more questions than their sister, and I found myself telling them all about my travels with Abu, about our long journey through Frankia, about the ways I made myself useful to him, about Beorhtric's home, and my friend Godric, who had taught me to hunt.

"A Saxon?" one of the boys – I had not worked out which one was Eirik and which Oskar – asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Yes," I agreed, uncertain why this should have elicited such a reaction.

"Saxons are nothing but rats!" the other boy announced.

"Ssh! Quiet, moss-brain!" Helga commanded, giving her brother a light clip on the back of his head. "That's not true." She turned to me, her face anxious. "Ignore him. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"I do!" the little boy said. "The Saxons burnt our farm and all our beehives!"

"Some Saxons did that. Not all of them. The same as not all Danes go raiding the coast." Before he could say any more, she looked once more at me. "What is it like where you come from, Salazar?"

I hesitated before answering.

"It's very green. With hills and valleys and wide rivers and lots of trees. Not like here."

I was describing Aquitaine, not Burgos. Placing my point of origin a little closer to where I had come to. Helga did not seem to notice my hesitation, and smiled delightedly.

"It sounds like our home. Our farm was in a valley, between two great green hills. There was no wide river, though, just a little rushing one, falling over the rocks."

The subject of Saxons was over, but it left me feeling vaguely disturbed.

A short time later, we were interrupted by the sound of horses' feet, and looking up, we saw Abu, with the fair-hired man who had stood with Helga's father at Torhild's side the night before, riding out. When he spotted me, Abu slowed his horse and called to me.

"I shall be back before we sup. You may do as you please until I return, Salazar."

And the horses moved on, leaving us behind. I stared after him, once more filled with resentment at being shut out.

Helga stood beside me, also gazing after them.

"I wonder where they're going," she said.

I made no reply.

"You should be careful if your master is working with Torhild," she said quietly, after a pause.

I turned to look at her, but she was still watching the disappearing horses.

"Why?"

She gave a small shrug. "Torhild is a very great witch, but she's tricky. She doesn't ever say what she means. And she uses some very strange magic. My father doesn't like the things she does. You should be careful – and so should the potioneer."


End file.
